Albertz Benda is pleased to present Ali Silverstein: To Put on the Edge, a Table, the Los Angeles-based artist’s first solo show in New York, on view in the project space from October 27 through December 17, 2016. For her inaugural exhibition at the gallery, Silverstein will show a vibrant new body of work that stems from her practice of gesture and reponse.

Silverstein explores impulse and desire through a continuous process of painting, cutting, and layering canvas. Each work is the product of a session or a “happening” - a constant push and pull between control and freedom, hyperawareness and automatism. Reacting to the necessity of the moment, Silverstein’s work recalls the spirit of abstract expressionism and action painting.

Silverstein has been mining the world of BDSM, utilizing the power dynamics of domination and submission in her creative process. Using the act of painting to address issues of vulnerability and shame, Silverstein’s ultimate goal is ever-expanding freedom - a legitimizing of desire and a searching-out of the places that we don’t allow ourselves to go.

In this latest body of work, Silverstein draws inspiration from the realm of domesticity to guide her gestures. The marks on the layered surfaces are improvisational yet influenced by decorative objects. The shapes and patterns in the work reference physical objects such as ceramic vases or textiles, however the abundance of colors and lines obliterates the boundaries of the figures, releasing the viewer from symbolic references.

Flirting with representation only to delve back into expressive abstraction, Silverstein transcends her personal comfort zone by embracing disorder and resisting her natural sensibility towards the tangible.

About the Artist

Ali Silverstein [American and British, b. 1980] studied visual art and comparative religion at Columbia University before attending the Slade School of Fine Art in London where she received her MFA in Painting. While still student at the Slade, she was one of the inaugural advisors for OUTSET Contemporary Art, a global independent philanthropic body constituted to support new art for the public good. After exhibiting widely in group shows in London and Tel Aviv, Silverstein now lives and works in Los Angeles. In Spring 2016, she was included in the group exhibition Best In Show at the San Diego Art Institute.